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Events

  • Jan
    31

    CS Seminar: Why AI Needs Social Choice (Daniel Halpern)

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    Friday / CS Seminar
    January 31st / 12:00 PM
    Hybrid / Mudd 3514

    Speaker
    Daniel Halpern, Harvard University

    Talk Title
    Why AI Needs Social Choice

    Abstract
    In many modern AI paradigms, we encounter tasks reminiscent of social choice theory: collecting preferences from individuals and aggregating them into a single joint outcome. However, these tasks differ from traditional frameworks in two key ways: the space of possible outcomes is so enormous that we can only hope to collect sparse inputs from each participant, and the outcomes themselves are often highly complex. This talk explores these challenges through two case studies: Polis, a platform for democratic deliberation (https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.15608), and Reinforcement Learning From Human Feedback (RLHF), a method for fine-tuning LLMs to align with societal preferences (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.14758). In both cases, the focus is on evaluating existing methods through an axiomatic lens and designing new methods with provable guarantees.

    Biography
    Daniel Halpern is a final-year PhD student at Harvard University advised by Ariel Procaccia. He is supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a Siebel Scholarship. His research broadly sits at the intersection of algorithms, economics, and artificial intelligence. Specifically, he considers novel settings where groups of people need to make collective decisions, such as summarizing population views on large-scale opinion aggregation websites, using participant data to fine-tune large language models, and selecting panel members for citizens’ assemblies. In each, he develops practical and provably fair solutions to aggregate individual preferences.

    ---
    Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/96824870974?pwd=QfxpsRpfWcDlx4TXPswbAd8X4Dqhyb.1
    Panopto: https://northwestern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=2159520b-1d46-4ece-ba17-b268017475c6
    Community Connections Topic: Being comfortable with being uncomfortable

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    TIME Friday, January 31, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Feb
    17

    CS Seminar: Understanding Quantum Systems via the Algorithmic Lens (Ainesh Bakshi)

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Monday, February 17, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Feb
    18

    Thought Leader Dialogue: AI and the Future of Work

    Center for Human-Computer Interaction + Design (HCI+D)

    1:00 PM

    EVENT DETAILSmore info

    TIME Tuesday, February 18, 2025 at 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

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    CONTACT Madison Deyo    madison.deyo@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Center for Human-Computer Interaction + Design (HCI+D)

  • Feb
    19

    CS Seminar: Developing Responsible AI Monitoring Technologies for Chronic Care (Dan Adler)

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Wednesday, February 19, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Feb
    21

    CS Seminar: Deep Learning Theory in the Age of Generative AI (Sadhika Malladi)

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Friday, February 21, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Feb
    24

    CS Seminar: Vector-Centric Machine Learning Systems: A Cross-Stack Approach (Wenqi Jiang)

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Monday, February 24, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Feb
    26

    CS Seminar: Enabling Language Models to Process Information at Scale (Tianyu Gao)

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Wednesday, February 26, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Feb
    27

    Bagel Thursday

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    9:00 AM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Thursday, February 27, 2025 at 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Feb
    28

    CS Seminar

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Friday, February 28, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Mar
    3

    CS Seminar

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Monday, March 3, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Mar
    5

    CS Seminar

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Wednesday, March 5, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Mar
    7

    CS Seminar

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Friday, March 7, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Mar
    10

    CS Seminar

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Monday, March 10, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Mar
    12

    CS Seminar

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Wednesday, March 12, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Mar
    14

    CS Seminar

    Department of Computer Science (CS)

    12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Friday, March 14, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

    LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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    CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

  • Mar
    17

    Winter exams begin

    University Academic Calendar

    All Day

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Monday, March 17, 2025

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    CONTACT Office of the Registrar    nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR University Academic Calendar

  • Mar
    22

    Spring Break Begins

    University Academic Calendar

    All Day

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Saturday, March 22, 2025

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    CONTACT Office of the Registrar    nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR University Academic Calendar

  • Mar
    31

    Spring Break Ends

    University Academic Calendar

    All Day

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Monday, March 31, 2025

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    CONTACT Office of the Registrar    nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR University Academic Calendar